Exclusive Interviews

| Shah Bobonis joined our boys over at BJPenn.com’s Fist-Ta-Cuff Radio on Sunday night and talked about a few of the things happening in the MMA world right night. More notably Bobonis, who is currently training for his XFC fight coming up in three weeks, talked about this past Saturday’s UFC 160 event with us and gave his thoughts on JDS and Cain 3, and all the aftermath from Saturday’s fights. Here are some of the highlights from that interview:

First Shah talked about the opening fight of the UFC 160 main-card between KJ Noons and Donald Cerrone:

“First of all, KJ Noons is always going to have a job. The guy always puts on exciting fights regardless of if he wins or losses. You know, he comes out to bang and people like to watch that. So, I always like watching KJ Noons fight. There’s things that he needs to add to his game but the thing is I don’t know if he’s going to add those things to his game after he fought Nick Diaz, before he fought Nick Diaz, like back in those days, you know. So I don’t really know if he’s really looking to add that stuff to his game. He seems very comfortable living and dying by striking.”

Bobonis continued to talk about Cerrrone’s win over Noons and how Cerrone has the tools to be a title contender but sometimes looks like he doesn’t have the confidence in himself to reach that level:

Uh, Donald Cerrone, he’s a guy that I think has all the tools. More than anything I think it’s a mental thing in the sense that, you know, he needs to come forward all the time with all of his tools. Sometimes he just tries to counter-strike guys, sometimes he tries to sit back and wait for the fight to come to him but he has wrestling; You see him take down Jamie Varner four or five times in a fight in the WEC and Jamie Varner is a great wrestler. He has great striking, he has great jiu-jitsu so more than anything I think he just needs to be confident in everything that he has and come forward at everybody. He has the tools to come forward and fight everybody, in their face, all the time for fifteen minutes, twenty-five minutes, whatever the case may be.” He continued,“The best example of Cerrone not believing in himself was him against Nate Diaz. He was just kinda sitting back, waiting for things to happen. If he would have approached that fight the way he approached the fight last night it would have been a different fight. It seemed like he didn’t want to take Diaz down in that fight because he was scared of what Diaz had off of his back. No man, just go forward and believe in your top game, believe in your takedowns and I think Cerrone would have beat Diaz that night.”

Bobonis then briefly spoke about TJ Grant’s KO victory over Gray Maynard and that gaining him a title shot:

“I hadn’t seen Grant fight before last night but he was super impressive last night. Maynard is a veteran of the sport and to finish a guy off like that, who am I to say that you don’t deserve a title shot.”

Bobonis also talked about the UFC’s choice to have Teixeira fight James Te Huna this past weekend over a bigger named fighter and how building Glover Teixeira’s name up to become a title contender or even a main event draw is probably their main focus:

“Maybe they’re still trying to build that name so that they can pop him into a main event on a FOX or PPV card but stylistically it was a very good matchup for Glover. But yeah, he needs to fight bigger names to be better known to get a title shot because he has all the tools as well.”

Lastly, Bobonis talked about the two heavyweight fights that took place at UFC 160, first the JDS vs. Mark Hunt fight. Here is what he had to say about that fight:

“It was a super dangerous fight for Dos Santos as far as you’re not going to get any praise win or lose in one sense because Hunt is 9-8, maybe 9-9 now, I’m not sure, .500 record. I thought Dos Santos was going to make a bigger effort to get it to the ground and he really didn’t and he showed his class on the feet. And knock-outs get progressively worse the longer you get into fights. The more tired you are the more wind you’re sucking in; when you get knocked-out it looks uglier and Mark Hunt fell victim to the third round knock-out. But man, big props to Junior Dos Santos. I didn’t think he could last that long on the feet with Mark Hunt, a K1 Grand Prix Champion, you now, so, man, big props to Junior Dos Santos.”

Shah Bobonis then responded to questions regarding the trilogy fight between Cain and JDS that is now next to take place for the heavyweight title:

“As far as Dos Santos fighting Cain Velasquez, it’s going to be a losing proposition every time. I think that guys like Cain Velasquez are the future of mixed martial arts. That guy can do everything. He’s got great boxing, great wrestling, uh, great submission defense. We haven’t seen him off of his back and we probably, we might not ever see him off of his back because he’s a very athletic heavyweight, you know? If he can stay at a healthy, maybe 225-230, you know, nobody that is bigger than him is going to be able to drop their level fast enough, as we saw when he fought Brock Lesnar, to take him down. Unless you get like a world class judo player or Greco-Roman wrestler, maybe a gold medalist in the Olympics, it’s probably not going to happen because he has too many tools to avoid the clinch, to avid throwing situations, and if you’re bigger than him you’re most likely going to be taller so it’s going to be a lot harder for you to change levels and get underneath him to get a decent shot off, and that’s the difference between Olympic wrestling and MMA; we have to stand a lot more upright because of the threat of uppercuts, knees and things of that sort.” Bobonis continued, “I don’t see Cain Velasquez losing for a very long time.”

And to close the interview Bobonis explained why the trilogy makes most sense rather than waiting to see how some of the other upcoming heavyweight bouts play out:

“I think [the UFC] should give Dos Santos the immediate rematch. He’s a bigger name and if you’re going with the UFC way of thinking its PPV buys and Dos Santos would create more PPV buys.”

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